Tuesday, 23 June 2015

Pelforth Brune: A certain 'je ne sais quoi'

I've mentioned my fondness for Pelforth Brune here before.
When I was a teenager, my dad used to do the occasional ‘booze cruise’ to
Calais, returning with a few 6-packs of Pelforth Brune amongst the bargain
cases of wine, and it was probably the second beer (after London Pride) that I
enjoyed that wasn't a standard light lager. If I didn't think he would read
this post, I might even admit to having pinched the odd bottle from the stash
in his shed and taken them to gatherings
at friends’ houses, feeling very sophisticated whilst shunning the lukewarm
Carling in favour of a French import.

And then, once I left home, I didn't taste it for years. It
is available in the UK (online retailers like the excellent Beermerchants stock
it, for example), but not a common beer by any means. And absence made the
heart grow fonder. As I became more interested in beer, I’d often think of
Pelforth Brune; what was the deal with that crazy sweet French beer I used to
surreptitiously sup as a teen? Was it a brown ale? A lager? I longed to sample
it again.

In the meantime, I trawled the internet for information,
piecing together a little background information on the beer and the brewery.
Pelforth dates back to 1914, and was originally named Pelican. The name changed
in 1972, adding the Anglo-sounding ‘forth’ because they used English malt in
their beer. English beers were popular in 1930s France, and Brune was first
brewed in either 1935 or 1937 (the date varies from source to source) to
satisfy this demand with a domestic product. The brewery was purchased by
Francaise de Brasserie in 1986, who were then bought out by Heineken two years
later. Pelforth remains a Heineken brand today and, whilst its scarcity and
somewhat unusual profile might seem exotic to me, it is very much a common,
everyday beer in France – it is the most popular dark beer in the domestic
market, and one of the highest sellers of any variety.

One of my online searches was fruitful – I found a great blog by Toby Cecchini, detailing his own small Pelforth Brune obsession, and
his post answers some questions I've often pondered. For example, the beer is
listed as a brown ale on sites like Ratebeer and Beer Advocate – it has a lot
in common with traditional English brown ales, and its body and malt profile is
no less substantial than many I've tasted. But I've often suspected that it is
bottom fermented, which Toby confirms. The term ‘double malted’ which appears
on the bottle’s label has never meant much to me either – turns out it refers
to the combination of lightly-kilned and caramel malt. As Toby points out, this
means that the beer isn't made from entirely roasted malt – caramel malt is a
liquidised roasted malt sugar. If this sounds like a money saving shortcut
imposed by the Heineken corporation, you may be surprised to learn that it has
always been this way.

A great passage from Toby’s blog describes reactions to his
professed love for Pelforth Brune;

“I've had friends drag me back bottles of it, with disbelief. Truly? With all the haut de gammeproducts one might purloin from Paree,
you want this beer from the supermarket? This reaction is a mere shadow of what
the French themselves exhibit when I regale them of my love for Pelforth Brune.
Most of them smirk acidly, trying to parse whether I'm being facetious or not.
Imagine some excitable French nerd sputtering on about his deep love for Miller
High Life.”

This leaves me
wondering whether either side of this argument is truly tasting the beer for
what it is. Of the small number of beer drinkers who will admit to a fondness
for Pelforth Brune, few will mention it outside of the context of happy
memories of French sunshine. Ben McFarland, for example, designates the beer as
“classic” in his book Boutique Beers,
whilst adding the disclaimer, “There may not be those do not consider this a
classic”. For him, though, “it’s like that Madeleine dipped in tea was for
fellow Frenchman Marcel Proust”, taking him back to his student days in France.
Those of us who like it seem quite determined
to like it, just as those who wish to dismiss it as unsophisticated macro fare
are unlikely to give it a fair chance.

I have a 650ml
bottle of Pelforth Brune in my possession. When my band played in Paris some
weeks ago, we decided to politely decline a kind offer of floor space in a
cramped apartment and treat ourselves to a budget hotel for the night. I bought
the beer to drink in the hotel room (everyone knows hotel room beers are a rare
treat) but, on arrival in an especially grim branch of Formule 1 in a less than
inviting neighbourhood, I lost all desire to drink it and went straight to bed
instead. Much as I like the beer, I wouldn't normally bother to bring any back
home with me; but it remained in my bag and, as it joined the rest of my stash,
I wondered how it would taste when drunk on my sofa. It was unlikely to match up
to the memory of the last time I tasted it, in a roadside restaurant hallway
through a leisurely bike ride between Nice and Juan-les-Pinnes.

It pours an
attractive reddish-brown, with a beige head. The aroma isn't hugely inviting –
it’s a little acidic, and reminds me of Harvey’s Bloomsbury Brown. The taste is
actually not dissimilar either, although perhaps this is closer to a big,
malt-monster of a Scotch ale – caramel sweetness is dominant, with no notable
hop presence at all. That malt is full of interesting flavours – there’s a
little chocolate, but mixed with cereals, a bit like a malted chocolate
milkshake. Banana, plum and cola are all present, alongside a nutty, marzipan
note. This is possibly characteristic of certain French yeast strands – I've
noticed it in the occasional Biére de Garde, especially Jenlain.

It’s unlikely to
be to everyone’s tastes – I can imagine many might find it too sweet – but
there’s genuine complexity here. I can’t pretend to be objective, because I want to like Pelforth Brune based on
happy memories I associate with the beer. But if you haven’t tried it and you
do happen to be ordering from Beermerchants, I’d urge you to take a punt and
try it for yourself. And if you don’t like it, book yourself a holiday in
France and see if that changes your mind.

1 comment:

Thanks for this. I've only drunk Pelforth Brune the once in a small bar, in a village near Paris. I quite liked it, but I didn't realise it divided opinion so much.

However, Toby Cecchini seems to misunderstand caramel malt. It is in fact a roasted malt not a liquidised sugar. The grain undergoes a kind of partial mash before being roasted, and this gives it sweetness. This from Beer Smith explains more http://beersmith.com/blog/2014/06/26/caramel-and-crystal-malt-in-beer-brewing/